“My name is Muriel Miguel. My other name is Bright Sun, and my other name is Waga Nadili. I am from two different nations. I am from the Kuna Yala, they're off the coast of Panama. And I come from Rappahannock, which is in Virginia. My mother and father, they met in Brooklyn, they married in Brooklyn, and they had three daughters in Brooklyn, so I am truly a city Indian. I come from a Star family. And I am the third daughter from the Stars.” [A Star Family is “…part of the Creation stories of how the Kuna began and where they came from. And they came from the stars.”]
– Muriel Miguel, Interview by Jo Reed
Muriel Miguel, director, choreographer, playwright, actor and educator, was born in Brooklyn, where she grew up in an Italian neighborhood. Many Native people, who had come from Canada, also lived in her neighborhood. Muriel was teased in school due to her peers not understanding who she was. Even her teachers considered her culture to be dead, which led to Muriel and others being sent to the principal’s office because they would contradict their teachers, insisting that their culture was not dead. The notion of Native culture being dead was not helped by the United States prohibiting the practice of Native people’s religions (this law was not overturned until 1978). Muriel was fortunate in that New York City was different from the rest of the country. Muriel described in an interview how a lot of medicine people left their reservations and came to New York City, where they then taught young people how to dance (sun dances, ghost dances), how to sing, and how to tell stories.
Understanding the importance of their culture, at around twelve years old, Muriel and her friend, Louis Mofsie, began a group called, Little Eagles. It is in this group where they learned each other’s songs and dances. They then went into schools and talked about their culture. (The group is still active in New York City and is now called the Thunderbird American Indian Dancers).
Muriel grew up in a family of performers. Her father and her two older sisters, Gloria and Lisa, would perform “…native dances and songs for tourists…at so-called Indian Villages.” Muriel’s interest in becoming a professional dancer was therefore sparked at an early age. She says that she was interested in dance because at the time she did not speak much, which therefore made dance appealing. She began to dance seriously at around thirteen years old, beginning with modern dance.
In an interview, when discussing the development from dancer to choreographer, Muriel said:
“…I was a crazy little girl. And crazy little girl meant that I've always felt, even in dance class, that I was going the wrong way. Everyone was swimming downstream; I was swimming upstream. And so in choreography, I would come up with really way out things for that time. And I realized that, no one understood what I was doing or trying to do.”
– Muriel Miguel, Interview by Jo Reed
This all changed when Muriel became involved in the NY avant-garde theater scene. Under the tutelage of Joseph Chaikin, she became one of the original members of Chaikin’s Open Theater (one of the early members was also Sam Shepard). They performed at La MaMa, an independent theater in New York City (which would debut Muriel’s performance, Red Mother, in 2010).
Upon leaving Open Theater, Muriel decided that she wanted to take a deeper dive into storytelling. She also wanted to work with women and tell women’s stories, as these stories were not being told. Thus, she asked her older sisters to join her in forming Spiderwoman Theater.
Spiderwoman Theater was founded in 1976 and became the first Native American women’s theater troupe. It was named after the Spiderwoman deity from Hopi mythology. ("The Hopis speak of a Spider Grandmother who, conscientiously weaving her webs, thought the world itself into existence." Hopi artist Michael Kabotie said: "The spider woman is the wisdom keeper, the grandmother figure, the female figure.")
Spiderwoman Theater’s mission statement:
“Our mission is to present exceptional theatre performance and to offer theater training and education rooted in an urban Indigenous performance practice. We entertain and challenge our audiences and create an environment where the Indigenous, women’s and arts communities can come together to examine and discuss their cultural, social and political concerns.”
– Spiderwoman Theater website
Along with her sisters, Muriel gathered women from varying ages, races, sexual orientation, and worldview to work with them. (Muriel herself identifies as a lesbian). The theater troupe began by talking about violence against women. Spiderwoman Theater’s first performance, Women in Violence, created a sensation when it opened in New York, where it then toured around the United States and Europe. Muriel said in an interview that people were shocked by the performance because “…we talked about things, we talked about penises, we talked about men feeling women up and what women can do about it. We talked about rape. We talked about a lot of things that, especially in Europe, they were not talking about.” The production was staged with “…simple lighting and a backdrop made of different quilts and native materials that would become a trademark of Spiderwoman Theater.”
From the beginning, Spiderwoman Theater has questioned gender roles, cultural stereotypes, and sexual and economic oppression. They also discuss sexism, racism, and classism.
“Their weaving of humor with popular culture and personal histories along with their sometimes shocking style excited the hearts and spirits of the women (and sometimes the men) in their audiences, in the United States, Canada and all over the world.”
– Spiderwoman Theater website
By the early 1980s, Indigenous communities “…identified the women of Spiderwoman Theater as a powerful voice for their concerns.” Muriel recounts a story where three little girls came up to her and her sisters after a show. The girls’ mother said: “This is the first time they've ever seen women of the same color as they are onstage. And you are their models.”
Muriel went on to become an Assistant Professor of Drama at Bard College, and in 1997 she was awarded, along with her sisters, an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Miami University in Oxford, OH. In 2010, they received The Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art. Muriel also has a daughter.
Spiderwoman Theater remains the longest running Native American women’s theater company in North America, with their most recent performance on September 5, 2018.
Let us conclude with one final quote from Muriel Miguel, where she discusses the importance in Spiderwoman Theater telling stories that have not been told:
“For us, there's so many stories that we have kept secret. There are so many stories that as soon as you start it, people say, “She can't tell that story.” And that once you tell the story, it's a freedom! It's freedom! It's out in the air. It's there. Your words are out in the air.”
– Muriel Miguel, Interview by Jo Reed
November 16, 2018
Works Cited
Miguel, Muriel. Interview by Jo Reed. National Endowment for the Arts, https://www.arts.gov/audio/muriel-miguel.
“The Spider Woman.” AMNH, www.amnh.org/exhibitions/totems-to-turquoise/native-american-cosmology/the-spider-woman.
Spiderwoman Theater, https://www.spiderwomantheater.org.
Images
https://www.spiderwomantheater.org
http://www.loosechangeproductions.org/projects/red-mother/
http://muspec.tumblr.com/post/54094648927/native-american-women-playwrights-archive
https://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/news/honoring-songs-a-benefit-for-spiderwoman-theater
https://news.boisestate.edu/update/2012/04/03/spiderwoman-theater-presents-red-mother-april-24/
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